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How to Make Nigerian Moi-Moi

Moi-moi which is beans pudding is one of the Nigerian foods which are mostly eaten by everybody. Some people call it OLE. Moi-moi is made from beans and the process involved in making it is a bit complicating but this article would simplify it and give you the best ingredients and procedures involved in its usage. Here is the list of Ingredients used in making Moi-moi. Depending on the number of persons you are looking to feed, you can either increase or decrease the quantities of ingredients to suit you. These ingredients would serve six persons depending on the various stomach size and other factors. • 6 cooked eggs • Half cup of vegetable oil • Fresh fish • Maggi (2-3 cubes) • Salt • 1 bulb of sliced onions • Tatashe or shobo (add about 5-10, it add the reddish colour) • Crayfish • 3 cups of beans Having listed the ingredients to be used above, let’s proceed to the step by step approach involved in its preparation Edit Introduction

Shredding off The Outer Coat: Firstly, add the beans into a bowl, sprinkle a handful of water and start squeezing with your hands in other to shed off its outer part. This is the easiest way to wash your beans; you would be through in about 15-20 minutes. You can add a little more water but don’t allow it to soak, continue squeezing until it starts shading off the outer coat. You’d probably be doing this for about ten minutes. When you are contented that a good amount of the beans have shaded off their outer coat, you can then add enough water to fill the bowl, the outer coat would rise to the top, sieve and continue squeezing. At some point, there would be just very few that have not shaded off their outer coat, work on them and keep washing till all the beans have shredded of their coat and become totally whitish in colour.

Preparing For The Grinding Part: After you are done with shredding off the outer coat of the beans and left with the whitish part of the beans, then split the red tatashe or shobo (pepper) into two halves to remove the seeds at the centre, this practice is done because the seeds add a bitter unpleasant taste to the moimoi. Remember to wash and also pluck off the green stem at the top. Afterwards, add all of them (beans, onions, crayfish and tatashe or shobo) in a small clean bucket and take to the commercial grinding mill. You can use a smart blender for this if you have one at home but it’s mostly advisable to blend it at the commercial grinding mill stand for it to be even and smooth.

Preparing and Incorporating The Spices: At this stage, Parboil the fresh/frozen fish, pick it out from the water then pieces the fish with your fingers, not really mashing (leave in bits). Add this mashed fished to the mixture of the beans paste. At this point, you can also add corned beef in place of the fish or a blend of both. While still in the bowl, add your groundnut oil and pour it into the grounded beans – about half cup, add 2 cubes of seasoning, the fish water (fish stock) (which must not be over half cup) and salt to taste. You can then stir the entire mixture together and taste to see if there are any irregularities.

Distributing In Moi-Moi Pans: From here, you can then distribute the mixed bean paste in as many moi-moi pans as possible, some people use moi-moi wrappers (leaves) for this purpose. After the distribution, you can drop into the cooking pot and add water.

The Cooking: After dropping them into the cooking pot with water, cover the cooking pot tightly and cook for about 40 to 60 minutes adding water at an interval to avoid burning or too much water that would run into the pans.You must monitor this part closely because if you allow the pot to dry, the plates would start melting especially if you are using plastic plates. Afterwards, bring out one of the plates after cooking for 40 minutes to check if it is done, check again after ten minutes, once it is done, allow to cool off for 30-60 minutes; then serve with pap (akamu), custard, rice or any other thing you desire.

Tips

Edit Tips
You can use the cooked eggs, corned beef, fish of any kind or a blend of both to make your moimoi. If you’re going to use fish, you need to parboil the fish, remove the centre bones and split into smaller pieces.

Warnings

Edit Warning
You must note that if you are cooking with plates, you can drop the plates on top of each other but you must drop tiny logs of woods, pieces of clothes or paper at the bottom of the pot in other to avoid burning (some people use the stem of the moi-moi-wrapper for this), but in essence, you must be careful.